Last week I posted three photos of my grandmother Sally celebrating her 50th, 60th and 70th birthday. Below are some photos of her in more of an "everyday" context, and I think all from the 1960s.
This photo is of my grandparents Sally and Gustaf sitting in their garden - the photo probably taken by my dad. Gustaf, born 1904, died in 1969 of Parkinsons' disease, which he had by then suffered from for a number of years. My guess is that this photo is from the early/mid 1960s. There is a very similar photo in an album, obviously taken at the same time - but there is no note of the year there either.
Here we have Sally sitting at her kitchen table, drinking coffee. Probably early/mid 1960s, and I'm guessing it was Gustaf who took the photo. It's typical of how I remember the kitchen from my childhood. The sofa was painted red. To the left of where Sally is sitting is a tiny sink. Dishes were always washed and dried directly after a meal, as there was no place for a dish rack. (And no other "work surfaces" either - the kitchen table was also used for preparing meals and baking etc.)
On a sunny day in the summer, they loved to have coffee outdoors in the garden. From my early childhood I remember the garden table being placed in an arbour of lilac bushes, but I don't think I have any photo of that. The house back then was painted dark brown. In the early 1970s, after the death of my grandfather, my dad had the facade clad with some maintenance-free yellow material, though (but still looking much like wood).
In this photo I think Sally looks much like in the one from her 70th birthday, and I'm guessing this was taken after Gustaf died. Here too, she is sitting next to the kitchen sink.
On the wall behind her, in both kitchen photos, you can see a small mirror. Before my dad had some updates made to the house in the 1970s, the only WC (+ a bath tub, but no sink for just washing your hands) was down in the cellar. (They also had an outhouse, which was still used in the summers.) There was also a small sink in one of the two bedrooms upstairs - which back in the 1930s had been another kitchen. The house, built in 1930, originally had two flats, each consisting of one room + one kitchen. The first few years, Sally and Gustaf - and my dad, born 1931 - lived downstairs; and Sally's sister Hildur + her husband Olle + Sally's and Hildur's mother Selma lived upstairs. Later, Hildur and Olle built their own house nearby, and their room became Sally's and Gustaf's bedroom. And after Selma died, the upstairs kitchen became my dad's bedroom. Anyway... Still in my childhood, the kitchen sink and mirror were also used for washing your hands and face, shaving, fixing your hair, or whatever.
After the death of my grandfather, my dad had a WC + sink installed in the wardrobe of the living room downstairs for my grandmother (who then also preferred to sleep in the kitchen); and another WC in a wardrobe upstairs, between the two rooms there which we used when visiting her.
The last years of her life, Sally moved to an old people's home in the village, but sometimes visited the house with us when we were there. We kept the house as a holiday house; and in the early 1990s, my parents added a substantial extension - including new kitchen and proper bathroom and large new living room downstairs + upstairs a large home office for my dad - and moved there for their own retirement years. Below is a collage showing what the house looked like when my brother and I finally sold it in 2014. The old kitchen was to the left of the new entrance seen in the top photo. (The two very small windows belonged to the original pantry.)
PS. Considering this weeks photo prompt for Sepia Saturday, maybe I should add a comment that Sally kept her hair naturally dark, and also long, well into her 70s. Only in her last few years did it turn grey, and then, while living in the old people's home, she also had it cut short and permed!
Casual pictures tell more about someone than posed ones. These are nice little insights. But one wonders how, when all those folks were living in that house, they managed in such tight & odd-placed quarters. Then again, I grew up in family of six (Mom, Dad, & four of us kids) with only one bathroom & we made it work. On weekdays especially we each had our assigned times in the bath room. Sometimes, if we needed more time than our allotted time, we'd barter with each other for the extra minutes needed. :)
ReplyDeleteGail, they were all used to similar conditions or worse from before. Sally grew up on a farm in a hodgepodge family of older half-siblings and lived on that farm until she got married at 30. Her father died when she was 7, but a much older unmarried half-brother took over the farm, and Sally's mother (his step-mother) and her children remained living there too. I doubt they ever had a bathroom or WC. As for Gustaf he was born out of wedlock and grew up in a tiny croft cottage with his grandparents + his mother, who in his teens got sent off to spend the rest of her life in a mental institution. Gustaf himself at age 13 went to live with a shoemaker and his family and be his apprentice - but managed to change his career to become a journalist in his twenties. As for the house he and Sally built in 1930, it was on walking distance from a lake with a sandy beach, which meant that in summer they could go bathing outdoors as much as they pleased. (I imagine the winters were worse in that respect, but on the other hand they no longer had a whole farm to take care of.)
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